


Be Careful What You Wish For

by embulalia



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Amputation, Brotherly Affection, Demonic Possession, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Possession, Protective Siblings, Psychological Torture, Torture, Trauma, i'm mildly ashamed to have written this but i mean, someone's gotta, very very ironic torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:43:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6716677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embulalia/pseuds/embulalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill takes it upon himself to do Ford a long, long overdue favour. No one is happy about this.</p>
<p>I couldn't get the idea out of my head but don't want to commit it to any larger story because it's horrible. Sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Careful What You Wish For

Bill's hands are so small. They don't even fully cover Ford's cheeks as he grips the quivering researcher's face, holding it still. But they're strong, strong enough to act as a second line of force in case the first—Bill's towering intimidation and manipulation—fails. 

The first never fails. 

Ford has tears in his eyes. He hates them, but he can't help it. He's afraid, he's very afraid. 

Everything had changed so fast when the portal was finally built. Fiddleford left in a horrified huff, leaving Ford alone with what he was quickly coming to realize was the worst mistake of his pathetic existence, a blunder grave enough to end the world. How does one move forward after that? He confronted Bill, of course he did, but that quickly proved to be a mistake as well. It painted a target on his back, shoved him directly into the line of a demon’s malevolent fire. He shut down the portal and immediately went to work at keeping it that way. He should have just taken an axe to it and rendered it permanently unusable. 

But he didn’t. He can’t bring himself to destroy it. 

And so Bill has taken to working what he needs out of the man with whatever techniques he has on hand.

“Aw, what are you crying for, Fordsy?” Bill asks, his voice tauntingly musical as he pinches the cheeks in his tiny black fingers. “I thought you always wanted my attention!”

Ford swallows hard, searching for his sense of rebellion. It had become difficult to find over the past month of torment, where every dream goes this way. Bill revels in the mindscape, the place he is able to lay a hand on Ford most directly. 

“You’re not getting anything out of me, Bill,” Ford spits out eventually. He’s shaking, he can feel it. It’s just a dream, he tells himself over and over, it won’t be too bad. It’s not real, after all.

The trouble with consoling oneself within their own mind is that any others present can hear it. “It’s not real,” his mental voice echoes, the sound carrying on the wind, “it’s not real.” Bill narrows his eye.

“Hm, I guess you’re right, Sixer! It isn’t real!” Bill laughs, letting go of Ford’s head. He staggers backward, the skin where Bill’s hands had been feeling as if it had been burned. “How can I get you to do anything for me if this isn’t real?”

Ford swallows hard. “W… What are you talking about?”

Bill laughs harder, louder, longer, and snaps his fingers.

 

 

Ford jolts awake, sitting upright at his desk. His chest heaves, and there is ink smudged on his cheek. He had fallen asleep on his work again, his face sitting in a pool of stuff that hadn’t gotten a chance to dry. The words are smeared. 

His forehead is slick with sweat, which he wipes off with a shaky arm. Then, he picks up a pen and carefully fixes the obscured words. He has taken to writing only in his choppy, quick, all caps script these days; the nicer, neater, looping style doesn’t pair well with hands that refuse to hold still. Drawing has also proven near impossible, leaving his illustrations more akin to scribbles than the polished works he prefers to create. 

He swallows hard. How had things become like this? How had he allowed everything to go so horribly wrong?

Ford leans back in his chair, allowing himself a moment of peace to catch his breath. He shuts his eyes. There is absolutely no way he will be falling asleep, that he is sure of. Not after that.

Deep breaths.

Quiet.

And then he feels something terrifyingly familiar. 

The sensation of being ripped away from his body is something that he has never gotten used to. Even when it was something he welcomed, the experience never failed to terrify, and by god if that horror isn’t many times worse now. 

The laughter fills his head, bombarding him from all sides, crushing him. Something is different this time. He isn’t outside of himself, no; he’s still inside, but everything is just out of reach. He tries to scream but his mouth doesn’t open, his chest doesn’t inflate, he doesn’t tense up. Instead, his body shakes with the laughter. Ford is terrified, confused as all hell.

What is this?

“What do you think, Sixer?” Bill asks with Ford’s mouth, stretching Ford’s limbs and waggling Ford’s fingers. “A bit different this time, eh?”

Ford has never felt anything like this. It’s as if he has been bound and kicked out of the pilot’s seat, where he can still see out the windshield but cannot touch the controls. He tries speaking. “W-What the hell is this?!” his fractured consciousness stammers. He barely recognizes his own voice as it bounces around inside his skull, ghostly and ethereal and not all there. 

“An experiment! You’re familiar with those, aren’t you?” Bill gets to Ford’s feet, swaying a little bit. He barely manages to keep his balance; even a body as familiar as this one takes a little bit of adjustment in the early moments. “What do you say; feel this?” He pinches the arm hard. A stab of pain hits Ford, and he cringes. 

This doesn’t inspire confidence.

“What are you doing?!” Ford demands, trying desperately to control his body. Nothing happens; at least, nothing he requests. Bill jovially walks his body across the room, teetering slightly as he gathers his bearings.

“Oh, nothing!” Bill chirps as he plops against the workbench. He hums a show tune, running borrowed hands over the tools. A stab of fear hits Ford through his apparitional chest. He freezes when Bill picks up a knife.

“Bill!” Ford yells, fighting harder for control after the moment of initial shock. Bill pauses his humming, a ridiculously wide grin on the body’s face.

“You know, Sixer, I’ve been around you for a while now,” he says, twirling the knife in his stolen hand. “And I figured I could do you a favour.”

“What are you talking about?!” 

“Oh, c’mon now, you’re pretty dense, but you’re not THAT stupid,” Bill laughs. He grips the knife properly. “What’s the thing you’ve always wished for, ever since you were a stupid little kid?”

An idea, a disgusting idea blossoms in Ford’s mind, and his panic intensifies. “P-Put that down!” he shrieks.

“Aw, I know you don’t mean that! This is what you’ve always wanted!” Bill cackles, pressing the left hand down flat on the bench, spreading the fingers. He raises the knife.

“NO!” Ford screams, and the knife comes down.

Hot agony rockets through him, the whole body in tremors. Ford can’t think. His mind is smothered with pain. It’s as if pain is the only sensation that exists in the world. He feels like he is drowning.

Even Bill seems rather overwhelmed; he says nothing for a few moments, wheezing slightly. “Wow,” he manages after a bit, “That was pretty rough!” He wipes off the knife on a rag, then switches it to the injured hand, spreading the other one out flat on the bench as he had the first one. The damaged limb shakes, and holding the tool alone sends even more sharp pain through Ford’s trembling body. 

“S-Stop!” Ford chokes out, watching his arm raise the knife once again. He is hyperventilating, panicking, fighting for control of himself harder than he ever has before. He squeezes his eyes shut when he feels the arm come swinging down once again.

The pain is twofold this time, and it’s too much. Too much. The world goes dark, and Bill is left alone in the ravaged body. 

 

 

When Stan knocks on the door of the shack in the woods, he gets no answer. This is where he’s supposed to come, he’s sure of it. He checked the address twice already. The place is weird, really weird; he hasn’t ever seen a building so aggressively triangular before. Just to be sure, he glances at the note again. 618 Gopher Road. Still the right place. Does he need to knock harder?

He tries, just to see. Pounding hard on the door just seems to push it open slightly, as if it hadn’t been closed all the way. Something about it feels so ominous. A shiver runs down Stan’s spine, and some part of him wants to leave.

But he can’t leave. Not yet.

He takes a deep breath, then steps over the threshold. The place is stuffy, cramped, filled with random bits of science equipment. Tarps are spread over a lot of the things, and what’s out in the open looks like excessively decorated junk. He can’t imagine what use most of this stuff would even have.

“Hey, Sixer?” he calls hesitantly, shutting the door behind himself to keep out the wind. It’s very cold in here, which is to be expected with the door left open like that. There’s no response to the call; the only sound in the building is Stan’s footsteps. “Where are you?”

He hears movement from the bottom of a flight of stairs. The door blocking it off is slightly ajar too. Stan makes his way down, his anxiety only growing as he goes. 

It’s a lab, a strangely dark lab. A massive, imposing, intimidating, triangular structure is against the wall; it grabs his attention and holds it. After a little while of perplexed gawking, he tears his gaze away and looks around the rest of the room. It’s a mess, papers and books and tools strewn everywhere. Huddled up in a chair at the desk, quivering slightly, his back to Stan, is his brother. Stan drops his bag on the floor and approaches.

“Sixer?” he asks, “What’s wrong?” He lays a hand on the man’s shoulder. Ford jumps, scrambling back from him. The aggressive motion startles Stan as well. His eyes flick over his brother, taking in every detail with nervous confusion. He looks awful, like he hasn’t slept in days. He looks pained, too. Worry floods Stan’s chest instantly, making him wonder what had happened.

Then he notices Ford’s hands.

Thick bandages have been poorly wrapped around both of them, but it’s a shoddy job. Makes sense; it’s certainly not easy to do that sort of thing with two injured hands. They’re both stained with blood, but they’re old stains. The injury is old enough to have closed up. Stan barely notices.

Five. Only five. Stan counts the fingers over and over again, sure that the number will come up different each time. It doesn't. Ford’s eyes flood with tears as he sits under the scrutinizing gaze. 

“Wh… What…” Stan swallows hard, hesitantly reaching towards him. He pulls his hand back when Ford withdraws from the touch. “Sixer, what happened…?”

Ford cringes a little at the nickname that no longer fits, offering no response. Stan glances around the room. He notices the dark stains splattered over the desks across from them, and he realizes that whatever happened had happened right here. 

“You didn’t…?” Stan questions, his voice barely above a whisper. Ford shakes his head hard. That’s enough explanation for now. 

Stan hugs him tightly but carefully, treating Ford as if he might fall apart at any moment. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that he might. He quivers like a leaf and makes no move to return the hug. Stan wouldn’t expect him to. 

“Th… Thanks for coming…” Ford wheezes, his voice paper thin and strained. Stan squeezes him a little bit tighter.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world…” Stan whispers back, feeling tears prick at his own eyes. He carefully helps Ford get to his feet and leads him upstairs. Stan notices dried blood around the inside knobs of every door, where he hadn't been able to see it on his way in. Ford had tried to close the doors after all, it seemed. Stan feels sick. 

Ford says nothing at all as he lets Stan walk him to the old, beat up car. From somewhere in the back of Ford’s mind, as he sits in quivering, agonized, traumatized silence, he hears Bill’s voice.

“One, two, three, four, five! See?! You’re normal now!”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about that. Thank you dearly for reading, although I wouldn't be surprised if you regret that decision.
> 
> EDIT: CHECK OUT THE AMAZING ART PEOPLE HAVE DRAWN FOR THIS FIC!!!!!  
> [x](http://embulalia.tumblr.com/post/154781432556/chickensoupfornosoul-anyway-i-dont-make-good), [x](http://embulalia.tumblr.com/post/154826305981/apparently-i-wasnt-done-drawing-for-embulalia-s), [x](http://embulalia.tumblr.com/post/152122889926/julientel-day-21-inspired-by-embulalias-fic), [x](http://embulalia.tumblr.com/post/152823813836/julientel-stan-hugs-him-tightly-but)


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